Abstract

This ARI looks at the main challenges faced by the Slovenian Presidency of the EU as the first of the group of countries that joined the Union in 2004.
Slovenia is the first of the member states that joined the EU in 2004 to have introduced the euro and taken up the Presidency of the Union in 2008. As part of the newly-introduced treble Presidency team –the Trio, along with Germany and Portugal–, it will be the last of the initial three to take up the Presidency and its turn will be between those of two member states that are considered the ‘engines of European integration’: Germany at the beginning of the first Trio and France at the beginning of the second. Slovenia’s ambition is to be a ‘good Presidency’.